Inside BS Show, Dave Lorenzo interviews Richard Blank about active listening

Dave Lorenzo: All right. So, uh, talk to us about. The, uh, the type of work you do. Uh, I think a lot of people who are listening, a lot of people who are watching, they think of when they think of a call center, they think of, you know, calling like the help desk to solve problems. But you do a lot more than that. So explain the spectrum of work that you do at Costa Rica's call center, Richard Blank: Many different profiles that we have here. Richard Blank: And that's an excellent question, Dave. We, we're very flexible. If there's non-voice support, you can have people that are just answering emails or just doing chat support. Then you have people that are inbound customer support, which is what you're usually used to calling any sort of company. We also have certain agents that are capable of doing outbound lead generation and appointment setting for people. Richard Blank: My favorite is a hot lead transfer. One. You get it while the lead is hot, and then you have the, the ACEs, you got the closers, they're very competitive down here and they're in high demand. So, uh, once again, I kind of see them as mercenaries. They'll just jump to. Best deal and you might not keep them along. Richard Blank: So I usually like to feel most comfortable around a level one customer. Lead generation and appointment setting, and then avoid, uh, eventually we can mold them into being salespeople on the phone. Uh, these individuals, it's very important that the client respects the labor laws here in Costa Rica, because a lot of the times they will be asking for certain overtime or certain adjustments that they need to understand. Richard Blank: Um, you are dealing with another country and they have different types of rules. So the best thing for us to do prior to working with the clients, to let them know of our holidays that we have and the other things that might disrupt any sort of workflow. We also would like for them to know the sort of culture that we have here, not necessarily in Costa Rica, but at my call center. Richard Blank: I don't like when supervisors write in bold or they write in red, I don't like cursing or screaming because you can bend them, Dave. But the worst thing we can do is break. Yeah. And it's not fair, not for our reputation for your project or even for the vibe of the project. The clients have to ensure that we have all the resources well before making phone calls. Richard Blank: I gotta make sure that the station is set up. Do we log into you through a VPN? Are we using your CRM or our CRM? Our dialer, your dialer list, scrubbed rebuttal script. Do you have recordings for me? Who's doing the onboarding. Who's doing the training. What sort of quality assurance and QA scores do you have there? Richard Blank: So, and it's okay. Dave, if I've worked with people before that don't know the, the terminology or the QA forms or onboarding, that's my pleasure because my resources are your resources. And anytime I can, uh, educate a client and guide them through a quality assurance form on what we should be looking for from the agent, then you and I see consist. Richard Blank: So your sales cycle gets a little bit shorter. You build your pipeline more, you're closing more on first calls. And when we're listening to these calls, you and I will be able to deduct where our strengths, where there areas of focus, where we were dropping the ball on the rebuttal, on the pauses with the tele signs. Richard Blank: So my class here is not just a bilingual person taking a script and making calls. I am very, very, uh, strict. In regards to representing our clients in the best light. I'm very selective of the tone that we have on the call. It's always empathetic and confident. And then I always teach my agents how to do these sort of micro expression reading on the phone. Richard Blank: So when they allow the client to talk or then it's our turn to interject to be able to do a follow up. And I've seen that our conversion ratios just by not, uh, having a hedge for an. Where somebody says, um, okay. Or just wonderful. Great. When someone's answering a question, Dave, you know, it's much more to your advantage for someone not to repeat, let us repeat it. Richard Blank: Let us do it for our clarification. If it's ABC or 1, 2, 3, and the same thing goes, my friend, when there's a bad cell phone connection, a dog barking music, cuz people are working from home now that's to our advantage twice. We can get things in the background to have things in common and inadvertently and passive aggressively. Richard Blank: I can tell you how much I love your dog, which is pretty much a hint to, you know, have him quiet down. But it also gives me a chance to be able to work with these clients in that certain way, to be able to move that conversation forward and to understand how they speak. I always believe in active listen, because a lot of the times the people are just moving things forward. Um, in case there might be some sort of family situation or a business promotion, a lot of people just skip through that. They should pause for a moment they should celebrate with them or should they pay condolences. And the one thing that I'm really missing on these calls is when people give positive escalations, you'll have a business associate M. Richard Blank: That does a wonderful job written me multiple times with the emails, just to make sure that we were locked in today, a plus. So there's a lot of people, a lot of team behind Dave Lorenzo and Richard blank. And so I want your business strategy and marketing strategy to take very much into consideration all those, that answer calls, filter calls, and that may be able to give you company culture or might be able to tell you about a promot. Richard Blank: or it might just get real with you for a minute. And then when you're at that stage of the call, Dave, then it's not selling anymore, then it's really just, uh, strangers are friends you haven't met yet. So now you're just really hanging out with somebody and just finding ways to meet in the middle. Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading. Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008. Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level. Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies. We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry. https://youtu.be/IVFQWhymunU https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/ https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95 https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/ https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961 https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7 https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229 https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html